"You fell into a pitfall! This was your first pitfall in the Schwarzwelt, wasn't it? how did it feel as you fell? Anyway You've been introduced to the typical cheap trap. Be very careful from this point on."

A hole in the ground that's somehow covered up so as to blend in with the surrounding terrain. Sometimes it's hidden beneath a Trap Door. Related to but not to be confused with Bottomless Pit. If it's not hidden, it's not a pit trap.

A standard subversion is where character A sets up a pitfall for character B, B walks straight over the covered pit and doesn't fall in, and then character A tries to cross (possibly preceded by tentative testing first) and does fall in, Wile E. Coyote-style.

Platform Hell titles will have these, usually with no indication at all that it's a trap.

Used to no effect (unless you count it working on Natsu, Gray, and Erza) by Lucy in Fairy Tail.

In Excel Saga, Il Palazzo has a Pit Trap under the Trap Door in his underground headquarters. Excel falls into it almost every time she sees Il Palazzo, and is aware of its existence, so it's not really a trap.

In the Kate Daniels book Magic Strikes, Kate arranges a blanket and pillow over a sunken cage to look like a makeshift bed. She then kicks a shapeshifter into the cage and slams it shut.

In the Discworld, Granny Weatherwax triggers one of these. She drops into a pit in which there is already a disgruntled bear. The bear's day, already disrupted, is completely spoilt by this, and it tries to get as far away from the enraged witch as it can. The Dwarf hunters who set the trap consider filling it in would be the ideal solution, but are soon disabused of this notion.

In Tom Sharpe's satirical farce Riotous Assembly, the insane BOSS secret policeman Liutnant Verkramp falls foul of one of these, when out on a mission against a white houseowner paranoid against the possibility the blacks are about to rise in revolt, who has taken extreme precautions in defending his property.

Call of Cthulhu. In Worlds of Cthulhu magazine #3, the adventure "The Golden Scorpion" had some (with Spikes of Doom) in the underground temple area.

Warhammer 40K. Catachan Devils are said to use these. Makes sense, since they're basically an army of Ramboes, and their planet is basically a sentient jungle that actively hates all non-indigenous life.

One level in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards has numerous pitfalls scattered across its first stretches. Some of them contain helpful items, but some contain nasty spikes. The trick is to trigger them and then jump very quickly.

NetHack has them. Some of them contain spikes. And if those spikes are poisoned, it's a potential instadeath if you're not poison resistant.

The Metal Gear series is full of these. They are apparently programmed so that only Snake can trigger them. And the enemies can even walk over them when they're open.

Space Quest II has a partially concealed pit trap death early in the game, and an Acid Pool pit trap towards the end. Amusingly, if you use a command to look at the pit trap the narrator will call you paranoid.

Elizabeth: A clever snare. It goes against the common notion that a pitfall must be hidden. Signs placed all around boldy proclaim "Do Not Enter." Humans frequently desire that which is forbidden to them.

Some Super Mario World hacks do this, especially with reverse P-switches (coins are safe to walk on).

These are present throughout the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series in the later dungeons. If the team's leader falls in one, they simply take a minimal amount of damage and move to the next floor. However, if anyone else on the team falls in one, they're removed from the party for the duration of the dungeon. This can be a large source of frustration if you're doing an Escort Mission or if you recruited a rare Pokemon.

Usable by the player in Monster Hunter. While it takes a while to set up, should a monster fall in, it'll be vulnerable in the time it takes for it to get out, allowing the player to heal, get in a few free hits, or tranquilize the monster if it's weak enough. In the 3rd generation games, Pitfall Traps do not work underwater, and are ineffective against Nibelsnarf.

Wily Stage 4 in Mega Man 2 has this. The first set only makes you go back, the second set is above Spikes of Doom. Hint: Use the Bubble Lead to see where the holes are.

Western Animation

Wile E Coyote And The Roadrunner. In "Stop! Look! And Hasten!" Wile. E. Coyote tries to capture the Roadrunner with one of these, which he makes from a book titled "How To Build A Burmese Tiger Trap." What he captures instead is a Burmese tiger (Surprisibus surprisibus).

In another Looney Tunes example, Daffy makes a pit under his welcome mat leading to a tank full of crocodiles for the Delivery Stork. The stork (who is a little tipsy) sidesteps the mat, and an exasperated Daffy drags him back outside and falls into the pit himself.

At the end of The Lion King 1˝, Timon and Pumbaa actually defeat the hyenas by luring them all into a large pit they dug while Simba is still fighting Scar.

In the Superman cartoon"Showdown", a mob tricks Superman into a Pit Trap through a Trap Door made of reinforced steel. The mobster and his henchman then place a heavy desk over the Trap Door. This... mildly inconveniences Superman.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy